TERROR ARRESTS IN NEW JERSEY; In Large Immigrant Family, Religion Guided 3 Held in Fort Dix Plot

By KAREEM FAHIM and ANDREA ELLIOTT; Kareem Fahim reported from Philadelphia and Cherry Hill, N.J., and Andrea Elliott from New York. Reporting was contributed by Richard G. Jones in Cookstown, N.J.; Sewell Chan, David Rohde and Maureen Seaberg in New York; Nate Schweber in Philadelphia; Ethan Wilensky-Lanford in Cherry Hill; and Nicholas Wood in Macedonia.

Published: May 10, 2007

The three Duka brothers -- Eljvir, Shain and Dritan -- not only prayed here at the Al Aqsa Islamic Center, but also recently began repairing its roof.

The work came naturally to them, as members of a large family of ethnic Albanian immigrants who own more than a dozen roofing companies in New York and New Jersey. They fixed the roof free of charge, encouraged by their imam to do good deeds. One congregant said the men were storing up credit for ''the afterlife.''

But the job remains half finished after the brothers and three other Muslim men were taken into custody this week, charged with plotting a terrorist attack against soldiers at the Fort Dix military reservation. Their arrests reverberated through the extended Duka dynasty, from southern New Jersey to the village of Debar, in Macedonia, the family's ancestral home.

''It's fine to be a religion man,'' said Murat Duka, 55, a distant relative of the defendants who was the first of the Dukas -- now numbering about 200 -- to move to the Northeast and work as a roofer. ''But if you get too much to the religion, you get out of your mind and you do stupid things.''

More than 4,600 miles away is Debar, a village near the Albanian border, where the influence of American ?gr?is seen in restaurants named Manhattan, Dallas and Miami. In Debar, Elez Duka, a first cousin of the three suspects, expressed disbelief Wednesday that they could be involved in a scheme inspired by Islamic radicals.

''This has to be political propaganda,'' said Mr. Duka, 29, who recently opened an Internet cafe there with money sent by his own brothers in America. ''America has always helped us.''

One day after the men were arraigned in United States District Court in Camden, a portrait is emerging of the five who face charges of conspiring to kill American military personnel, which could send them to prison for life. Much less is known about the sixth, Agron Abdullahu, 24, who the authorities say was a sniper in Kosovo but who faces lesser charges, carrying up to 10 years.

Serdar Tatar, 23, a Turkish immigrant who lives in Philadelphia, had grown so religious over the last two years that his father, Muslim Tatar, said they had become estranged. Serdar's Russian-born wife, who is pregnant with twins, said he was so busy working that he rarely went to the mosque, but sometimes read the Koran and helped her 11-year-old son with his homework.

Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer, 22, a Palestinian born in Amman, Jordan, had for the last year kept up an exhausting routine of work, sleep and prayer, according to his mother. He drove a cab at night in Philadelphia, had recently dropped out of Camden County Community College to help the family pay two mortgages and attended services occasionally at the Al-Aqsa center.

And there were the Dukas, ages 23, 26 and 28, who came to this country illegally, more than a decade ago. The brothers, like many of their relatives and fellow ethnic Albanian immigrants in the area, have worked in roofing, coming to own two companies, in addition to a pizzeria. They are not from an Arabic-speaking nation -- though one is married to a woman from Jordan -- but they sometimes used Arabic names for their roofing businesses: Qadr, which in Arabic means destiny, and Inshala, an unusual spelling for a commonplace expression that means ''if God wills it.''

It is not fully known how the Dukas met the other defendants, but their lives began to intersect as early as 1999, when Mr. Tatar, Mr. Shnewer and Eljvir Duka, known as Elvis, were all enrolled at Cherry Hill West High School.

One of Mr. Shnewer's five sisters married Eljvir Duka and is now pregnant. On Wednesday, Lamese and Israa Shnewer, ages 12 and 14, stood in the threshold of their house in Cherry Hill, holding tabloid newspapers with their brother's picture splashed across the front. Cars slowed down as they passed. People snapped pictures with their cellphones.

Israa pointed to a neighbor's house and said, ''They hated us to begin with.''

The criminal complaint filed against the suspects on Tuesday portrayed Mr. Shnewer as the leader of the group, speaking most frequently in taped conversations about tactics. But his mother, Faten Shnewer, said in an interview that the charges ''made no sense.''

She said that televised images from the war in Iraq had angered him, and wondered whether, while he was watching the news, he had said something that was misinterpreted by the authorities. When the authorities searched the family's home, they took a Koran, along with the mortgage bills and other household items, Mrs. Shnewer said.

''He's a good boy,'' she said as she stood in the doorway of a relative's home. ''I'm proud of who we are.''

Co-workers and relatives described him as shy with a sweet nature. ''Mohamad was like a teddy bear,'' said Jaime Antrim, the manager of a restaurant in Marlton, where Mr. Shnewer once worked. He showed his religious devotion in some ways -- he would not eat pizza cut with a knife that had come into contact with pork -- but also served alcohol and did not break for the daily Muslim prayers.